Census: INS announces the first final results on July 4

The president of the National Statistics Institute (INS) Tudorel Andrei yesterday announced that the institute will announce on July 4 the final results regarding population, of the census organised in 2011, while those concerning dwellings will be made public in September-October. “This delay results from the fact that the final results should have been announced in October, according to the calendar. We made efforts to announce the results in July, several months earlier,” Tudorel Andrei explained.
The INS official announced, on March 13, that the final results of the 2011 census will be unveiled in July, three months earlier that planned, and the data will be analysed and discussed with a panel of experts. He added that the complete data of the census will be made public in 2014. Tudorel Andrei added yesterday that the intention is to totally change the way the next census will be organised, by renouncing the classical form of personal interview and opting instead for a combined form. “We intend to completely change the way the next census is organised. So we can say: 2011 remains the last census in a classical form,” the INS president said.
The Population and Dwellings Census was conducted on 20-31 October 2011. According to the preliminary results of the Population and Dwellings Census 2011, announced in August 2012, Romania has a stable population of 19,043,767 Romanian and foreign citizens residing in the country, of which 9,764,011 (51.3 pc) are women. Eurostat set for the 2011 census a data providing interval of 27 months, which ends at the beginning of 2014.
The census was strongly politicised ever since the data collection phase, when the opposition of year 2011 boycotted the process, complaining that the data requested by statisticians would be used to electoral purposes. Later, the results of the census received a much more dramatic political importance, with the stake being the validation of the referendum for the impeachment of President Traian Basescu. At that moment, several politicians accused INS of delaying the completion of the referendum.
At the end of last year, INS announced a significant adjustment of the data regarding the GDP for 2011, with a minus of RON 20 bln, which sparked a tough reaction from the government, finalised through PM Victor Ponta’s decision to sack the then INS president Vergil Voineagu.